Hello

I'm a user of Mandrake from version 7 about.
I switched to Mandrake because of ease of configuration GUI.

Now I'm faced with a decision of making a choice of a distro for a big production house.
They are switching from windows to linux, about 40 workstations and 3 servers.
They will use maya (3d application), shake (2d application), mentalray64 (render software)
All the professional applications they will use don't support Mandrake.

Fedora is one of my choices now.

I would like to eval it.
Where can I get an eval CD/DVD iso.

Does the distro come with all the needed drivers (like mandriva does)?
Does a desktop friendly version exist?

I can also use some user advise.
I'm always open

moogy

fedora comes from fedora.com, suse comes from suse.com or they will both do just what you want.

http://fedora.redhat.com/download/ - full version is free, CD and DVD ISOs

It comes with most drivers you will need (did a good job of auto-detecting my hardware) EXCEPT graphics drivers, it comes with the standard MESA drivers, which have no 3D accelleration and other graphical goodness, which judging by your requirments, you are depending on. I have an ATI and to be perfectly honest, my next card is going to be NVidia, ATI drivers on Linux are pretty bad, i've never had it working ,despite their help (HA!) and users from here. I hear lots of good reports about Nvidia linux drivers and many bad ones about ATI ones (check these forums for a load). Do all your machines have the same spec??setup 1 with fedora and do some testing is the best way, write a list of what it can/cant do in meeting your requirements then work on fixing them (may mean another distro), let one of the workstaff spend a day trying to do their normal tasks and see which they cant do (probably things like "wheres the internet, i cant find the icon :P)

I find it very desktop friendly, lots of GUIs etc. for the system config stuff, but you can get under the hood if need be.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Why does it still come with MESA.
I like Mandrive because it comes with all you need.

Except the GFX any other drivers or software I would nee to think about.

Java, mp3 encoding, divx
etc

thank for the help

moogy

everything using xorg-x11 or xfree86 comes with mesa, mandrake is no different. it is not part of the distro, but part of the cross distro windowing system.

Re drivers on Fedora: Remember that Fedora, by policy, will not include any software (including drivers) that are not open-source. That's why, for example, nVidia drivers are not included. (The drivers are freely available directly from nVida, and RPMs are available on Livna.)

For your purposes, I think the suggestion to download the DVDs of several distros, install them on a "typical" client system, and try them out is the one to follow.

Well the powerpack distros comes with the ATI and Nvidia driver on the CD pre compiled

moogy

good for them. it's a doddle to install the nvidia drivers.

Well to know what software you need and whether fedora can supply it (pretty much any distro can run any software) you need to say exactly what requirements you have.

Based on what you said though, Sun has java binaries for linux - http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp

and some great instructions

to encode (and play?) MP3s there are several programs, i use grip which rips from cds to several different formats, playing MP3s, there are quite a few players, most with MP3 codecs (Fedora doesn't ship MP3 functionality because of liscence issues). Search these forums, you'll find loads of posts to help

DivX same as audio players, there are LOADS, and they all have codecs for various formats, check out VLC player (has an identical windows port, so you could test that before hand) or mplayer.